


I Should Have Got Tequila

by sanssssastark



Series: Let Me See What's Underneath [2]
Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV 2020)
Genre: F/M, Flynn is the best wingwoman, There's a lot of pining here, but that's not why she's upset, julie gets dumped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:33:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28150200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanssssastark/pseuds/sanssssastark
Summary: It’s her first grown up relationship. They were casual at first. Nick asked her out just before the last few stops on their first summer tour, but after a couple of months back in Los Angeles, they were solid. A solid couple. Good together. That’s what people said.People who didn’t know her that well anyway.Because that’s how she always referred to their relationship in her head. Her first grownup relationship. First. Implying there would be others.
Relationships: Alex Mercer/Willie (Julie and The Phantoms), Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Series: Let Me See What's Underneath [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2062191
Comments: 14
Kudos: 170





	I Should Have Got Tequila

**Author's Note:**

> Another little ficlet from the Let Me See What’s Underneath 'verse, but this one from Julie's POV. These two circle each other for literal years in this universe and it's so much fun.

It’s her first grown up relationship. They were casual at first. He asked her out just before the last few stops on their first summer tour, but after a couple of months back in Los Angeles, they were solid. A solid couple. Good together. That’s what people said.

People who didn’t know her that well anyway.

Because that’s how she always referred to their relationship in her head. Her first grownup relationship. First. Implying there would be others.

So, the breakup shouldn’t surprise her.

What does surprise her is that Nick’s the one that pulls the trigger.

“But I thought…thought things were going good? You…you invited me to meet your parents? Did they not like me?” Julie asks, blinking at him, while he sits across from her, his mouth twisted into a small frown. He doesn’t look like he wants to do this.

“My parents love you,” Nick says, sitting back in the chair across from her. It’s new. Almost everything around her is new, a gorgeous colorful rug, two chairs against the wall, across from the brand new recording and mixing equipment she squeezed into this makeshift home studio slash office in her first grown up apartment. The leather couch she’s sitting on, though, that’s not new. She made the boys drag it out of her mom’s old studio and haul it from Los Feliz to her new place in West Hollywood, just a few blocks from where they’re sharing a duplex with Alex’s boyfriend Willie.

“But you don’t,” Julie finishes the thought for him. That stings. He told her he loved her, more than once now and she said it back. It felt right, after months together because she did love him. He’s everything she could want and he’s good to her. He’s just…good. A good guy who deserves to be loved.

“It’s not that, at all,” Nick says, running a hand through his hair, the blond strands sliding through his fingers easily and settling right back into place.

Shaking her head, Julie bites her lip. “Then I don’t understand at all. I guess, I don’t have to though, if this is what you want?”

“What I want?” Nick laughs a little at that, but she knows him well enough to know there’s no humor there. She just has no idea where any of this is coming from. “It’s not about that either. It’s about what you want and I’m pretty sure it’s not this. Not me.”

That though, that makes her take notice. So, he’s the one dumping her, but it’s somehow her fault?

“That’s not true, at all,” she says, feeling a tiny flame of resentment light in her chest. No one gets to tell her what she does or doesn’t want. Not even a good guy like Nick.

For a moment it looks like he’s struggling with something. He stands up, paces back and forth for a moment and then another, before he finally turns to her and says, “So, you’re saying if Luke was here pouring his heart out to you, telling you he wanted to be with you, you’d turn him down?”

Julie blinks up at him. She’s so stunned, her jaw actually falls open. She didn’t know that jaw drops were actually real things until now. “What does this have to do with Luke? He’s not…we’re friends and bandmates. We’ve never…”

“Is he really just a friend, Julie? Really?”

“Luke’s not just anything, but I don’t like what you’re implying. Do you think I’m cheating on you or something? I would never and not with Luke, I’d never risk…”

“And there it is.”

Now she’s angry. Actually angry, which is definitely another sign this was never going to work since it’s easily the most intense emotion she’s felt around Nick the entire time they’ve been together.

“There what is?”

He opens his mouth to respond and for a short, panicked moment Julie thinks he might actually call her on it. Because now that she’s over the shock that he came over for what she assumed was a Saturday morning trip to the farmer’s market and instead is apparently breaking up with her, her mind can really focus on the why of it all.

Nick’s a good guy, but that doesn’t make him stupid. Because he knows how that sentence was going to end. That she would never be with Luke, not because she wouldn’t risk her relationship with Nick, but because she’d never, ever risk her friendship with her bandmate, her writing partner, her best friend.

He doesn’t say any of that though, because he’s a good guy. He just nods once, clearly seeing the truth written across her face before he leaves.

“Goodbye, Julie,” he says from the door, but she doesn’t turn to watch him go, just hears the sound of it creaking open and then clicking firmly shut.

And that’s when the first tear pricks at the corner of her eye, like it’s being forced up and out of her as a vice clenches her heart. Then it tightens even more when she picks up her phone and her fingers pull up his number first. Her thumb hovers there, knowing that if she dials, he’ll come. He always does, but…as much as she wants him right now, needs him right now…she can’t. She won’t.

She calls Flynn instead. Flynn who’ll pick up some ice cream and rum on her way over and then only side eye her gently when she explains what Nick said and watch terrible rom coms with her until she falls asleep.

Not that Luke wouldn’t do that too. Of course he would. And that would be a mistake because right now, there’s nothing to stop her from telling him everything. She almost did once, months ago, actually after she got back from her first date with Nick. She found him elbow deep in a new song and she’d kicked off her sandals, changed into a pair of shorts and a hoodie—one of his actually, not that he seemed to care when she stole them—then sat cross-legged on the bed beside him while he played the chords to Perfect Harmony for her the very first time. She asked him what it was about, who it was about and he shrugged, rubbing at the back of his head. “It’s just a dream, you know, a fantasy. A maybe. A someday.”

“Oh,” she said, fighting the words threatening to spill from her mouth. She couldn’t, not if he didn’t feel the same way, not if he didn’t want her like she wanted him. And even if he did…especially if he did…things like that, bandmates getting together, those things don’t end well. They end with hard feelings and breached contracts and lawsuits and broken hearts. Like she told Nick, she couldn’t risk it.

So instead, she nodded and then kept her eyes focused on their notes, the lyrics scrawled over notebook pages, the chords written, crossed out and replaced again until it was perfect.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, when they were finished. “We should record it when we get home. No one will see it coming, a ballad from Julie and the Phantoms. Could be the thing that really finishes off the album. Maybe it gets us some Grammy buzz.”

He nodded, sending her a small smile, just one corner of his mouth lifting. It reminded her of the first time they sang together, when he showed her the arrangement he’d done for Bright, just a few days before she joined the band officially. He’d smiled like that then. Back before their record deal and Edge of Great going to number one and opening for Trevor Wilson and getting to record their LP, back before Nick.

Nick, who she went on a date with that day. Nick who was so sweet and had kissed her goodnight at her hotel room door, not realizing that it was actually Luke’s room he’d walked her to and that, ultimately, is what made her slide off the bed that night and head for the door to her adjoining room, more sure than ever that she’d made the right choice.

It’s barely fifteen minutes later when Flynn lets herself into the apartment, an LA miracle considering she was in Santa Monica when Julie called.

“Oh sweetie,” she says, kicking the door shut behind her and the grocery bag clinking against her countertop. More than one bottle of rum. She really is the best best friend in the world.

Julie looks up from the spot she found in the middle of her living room, it’s still empty because she hasn’t had time to go out and buy a coffee table, but it’s perfect for right now, with a massive blanket wrapped around her and Celine Dion’s All Coming Back to Me Now blasting through her speakers. The tears haven’t stopped flowing. She knows what she looks like. She knows she looks like a devastated dumpee, when that’s not it at all.

“I’m in love with Luke.”

“Fuck, I should have got tequila.”


End file.
